Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Movie Review - 127 Hours

If you only have time and resources to see one movie this holiday weekend, brace yourself and experience 127 Hours.Director Danny Boyle as taken movie making to a new height. This film is engaging, experiential and evocative. The visuals are eloquent and realistic. It isn't the blood that is unnerving, it is James Franco's portrayal of an everyman character making a choice we're not sure we could make. If there is a short list for the Oscars, Franco should be on that list.

Boyle also does what too few movie directors do well, he shapes his world with sound–music that provides character and pulse, the whisper of place and the dramatic sound of silence. Boyle allows his sound designers to employ an audio palette that startlingly conveys the agony of severing a physical nerve. Will you cringe? Yes. But there is no gratuitous violence to your senses, just raw honesty.

If you're looking for an extreme entertainment ride, the action and the music will take you there. But if you are willing to dive in deeper and hold on tight, Boyle will take you to a world of self discovery.The real-life story of Aron Ralston's five-day ordeal trying to free himself from a boulder that pinned his arm to a canyon wall is more than a story of personal challenge. Boyle has molded Ralston's unique experience into a metaphor for the isolation most of us feel in modern society and the solitary way we try to face our personal trials.

Whatever your intimate struggle–joblessness, illness, emotional loss–none of us are alone and we all need help. See this movie. Let yourself take the visual, audio, emotional and physical ride with 127 Hours. It does what only the best movies can do, it delivers every viewer to their own personal destination. Oscars Take Note. - Keri DearbornLink to the trailer.